All Things Chill

My photo, her flowers, our books

1st Course: Beet and Tuna Tartare with Wasabi Cream
2nd Course: NY Strip Steak with Zucchini Ribbons and Chimichurri Sauce

Tuna tartare isn’t dead! YAY. I’ll be honest. I have to give credit where credit is due. The one time I have seen this delicious combination of beets and tuna was 3 years ago at the Lark Creek Steakhouse in downtown San Francisco under chef Jeremy Bearman – who incidentally is the new chef at Rouge Tomate NYC. Jeremy sent this out to me between courses of chorizo butter (omg yes I know) and the most sexy ribeye and luxurious sauces, so remembering the exact flavors were impossible to recollect… but I *did* remember something:

It started with the deep maroon color. I mentioned to the server that the colors were beautiful and the cream had such a distinct shade of green from the wasabi paste – he waited for me to taste it first before he told me the basic ingredients: beets and sashimi grade tuna. It blew my mind.

So, when I remembered I had beets waiting for me at home, I decided to stop by Pure Food Fish (they’re a bit pricier, but they’ve never let me down) and grab a small chunk of tuna and give it a shot. I mean, if I struck out, I’d be out $8, right? RIGHT. ADVENTURE COOKING AHOY. LOL.

Beet Component
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Take 3 beets, cut off tops with a paring knife, sprinkle with Kosher salt and pepper and individually wrap in foil. Place beets on baking sheet and bake for at least one hour, or until beets are fork tender (trust me, it’ll be at least an hour). Pull out of oven to cool and use a paring knife to take off the thin layer of skin. Carefully slice into 1/4 inch cubes.

Tuna Component
8oz. of sashimi grade tuna, cut into 1/4 inch cubes and set aside. 15 minutes before serving, add 1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce and carefully mix with your hands or a spoon.

Wasabi Cream Topping
Take 2 teaspoons of wasabi paste and 1 cup of ice cold heavy whipping cream and beat until you see soft peaks from your whisk. You may have to play around with the ratios since different people have varying degrees of wasabi tolerance – and that’s saying it politely. Hee hee.

Right before you plate, ccaaarrreeefully mix the beets and tuna together. You’ll notice that the beets will impart a bit of its color onto the fish cubes. Spoon into serving vessel and then top with wasabi cream. Serve with slices of lemon!

The sweetness of the beets butts up right against the salty soy and freshness from the tuna. The wasabi cream reminds the brain that each bite is somehow familiar… but the overall experience is new.

As for the steak and chimichurri sauce, you can find them here and here (I subbed mint for cilantro for the sauce). For the zucchini, I just took long slices of the squash with a veggie peeler and boiled them for a minute and tossed with olive oil, Kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper!

Stop eating boring tuna -> stop having a boring life (thx Clint!) LOL.

YAY for great color contrasting plating!!!

~Spec

CHICKEN CHICKEN CHICKEN. LOL. Last month, I decided that I’ve favored the beautiful chicken thigh/leg meat to breast meat for far too long. I always choose it due to the fact that it has a deeper flavor profile during stews and marinades… which is true, but that doesn’t mean that breast meat isn’t delicious too!

Thankfully my local QFC (Think the midpoint between a Safeway and a Whole Foods) had a great deal on locally grown organic chicken breasts so I picked up 2-three pound packages and portioned out two breasts to each zip top bag, tagged them with “what” and “when” and threw everything in a freezer. It was even cheaper than breaking whole chickens down themselves! All I have to do now is pull them out in the morning and when I get home, I have two beautiful chicken pieces to work with!

Chicken breasts don’t need long to cook, so I made a quick saute of chicken scallopini with a lemon-caper sauce on pasta with mushrooms and arugula. Instructions follow bellloooowwwwww:

Cut 1 chicken breast in half lengthwise, lay a sheet of plastic wrap on top and pound each slice out with a mallet / pan until thin – about 1/3 of an inch’. Coat chicken with flour, Kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper and preheat a pan over medium high heat. Add oil (I used a mixture of olive and canola -eyeballed 2 to 1 ratio) and wait for wisps of smoke and CAREFULLY lay the chicken AWAY from you so oil doesn’t splatter on your favorite shirt. Cook until golden brown on one side and then flip for another minute.

Once you pull the chicken from the pan, drain excess oil and add minced shallot and garlic – about 1 tablespoon each. When fragrant, add red pepper flakes (1 tsp) and 1 cup of tasty white wine. If you’re also making pasta, add about 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid, the juice of 1/2 a lemon, some sauteed mushrooms and arugula. Reduce by half, take off the heat and whisk in 3 tablespoons of butter cut into small cubes.

Combine the sauce and drained pasta (I used spaghetti, would’ve liked linguine!) and top with crispy chicken. Garnish with parsley, Parmesan cheese or toasted nuts and serve.

The meal was brought to you by Ella and Louis Again, another vinyl gem we found scourging the thrift stores during our trip in Portland last weekend.

It’s a simple dish that has a bit of crunch, a creamy sauce, peppery notes from the arugula, earthiness from the mushrooms and a bit of brightness from the lemon juice. Perfect for a weeknight meal, but unfortunately, it doesn’t allow for leftovers the next day. Hee hee.

YAY CHIX + PASTA

~Spec

LOL. One of Deb’s many pictures of my birthday shindig. MOST AWESOME PICTURE EVER. Looks like we’re getting ready to dance in a Kanye West video! Just ordered prints of it and will try and blow it up as big as possible.

MEEEMMOORRRIIEESS.

~Spec

Taterpots! Liana and I picked this lil’ guy up from Greg’s on Hawthorne street (OMG cuuuute neighborhood) last weekend. Clifford, his newly ordained name, has the ability to look totally like a potato *AND* grow small herbs out of a little hole in his head. Doesn’t he look happy in the picture AND in the video? Aren’t we great at following really simple directions? Hee hee.

They come in two different shapes (slim and shorty) and have a good amount of herb choices available – we chose basil just in case we get a hankering for a simple pasta dish. We’ll keep a weekly (maybe bi-monthly) account of his progress, so stay tuned! Hee hee.

YAY CLIFFORD!

~Spec

Trying to crank out this blog post as fast as I can since we’re taking a quick trip to Portland today! WHHHEEEEEEE. This is an arugula and strawberry salad with a very mild blue cheese and an aged balsamic dressing. Both the strawberries and arugula were from the New Roots CSA delivery last week!

The arugula had quite a bit of dirt on it, so I filled the sink with cold water and let it hang out for a bit (about 20 minutes) so that the undesirables would fall to the bottom – this also crisps the leaves a little too!

I drained the leaves and patted them down with a kitchen towel, sliced the strawberries and “chunked” the blue cheese. Then, I made the dressing. Aged balsamic is VERY sweet, so I wanted to keep the integrity of that delicate flavor by only adding a few other ingredients: 2 tablespoons balsamic, 1 tablespoon of good olive oil, 1 teaspoon minced shallots and a heavy pinch of Kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper. SIMPLE and MORE than enough for a salad that feeds two people!

So, I took one big bowl, added all of the salad components in and SLOWLY drizzled 1/2 the salad dressing AROUND the bowl, as close to the rim as possible – the dressing will slink down the sides of the bowl.

Once you gently toss it around with your hands you can scoop the leaves out in a semi-tight ball (think Indiana Jones after he pulls the “idol” off the pedestal in Raiders of the Lost Ark) and take the strawberries and cheese chunks that remain in the bottom of the bowl and quickly place them on top of the plated leaves – now your company will see what’s in the salad and say “WOW STRAWBERRIES? COOL.”

Flavor-wise, I don’t think the salad needed anything else. You get a hit of sweet from the strawberries and the dressing, then… a subtle pepperiness comes from the arugula and then you get a hit of INTENSE blue cheese flavor that rounds out perfectly as fast as it got there. It’s tasty. Hee hee.

Visually, it needed something ELSE to make it perfect – maybe some frisse for structure and a bit of white, or toasted pecans or walnuts to show depth and earthiness. ANYWAY IT WAS TASTIES.

I’ll be mobile blogging from the iPhone the next few days. HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

XOXO

~Herschell / Spec

A few weeks back, Liana and I subscribed to New Roots Organics, a CSA based not far from where we live. CSA stands for community supported agriculture – essentially, you pay a CSA money for access to tons of in-season, local (when possible), organic and sustainable produce. Some have a pickup service at specified locations and others, like New Roots, leave a hefty Rubbermaid container on your doorstep.

Well, we received our first shipment yesterday ON EARTH DAY. YAY. We received two of the following: cameo apples, minneolas, D’Anjou pears and a cute pint of strawberries as well as a big hefty bunch of arugula, some fatty carrots, two crowns of broccoli, romaine lettuce, 1 leek, 2 zucchini, 3 potatoes from Oregon and locally grown wkale raab – kale that has been allowed to flower.

I decided to cook the kale raab first, since it looked like the most delicate item in the box. Since it’s a CSA, I gave it a good rinse in the sink and allowed it to dry a bit before cooking – organic doesn’t mean CLEAN, k? Kaies.

I preheated a pan over medium heat, then added good Spanish olive oil and preheated that until wisps of smoke emit from the pan. I then added the kale raab and sprinkled a heavy hand of Kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper on top. After 3 minutes, I added three cloves of minced garlic and a pinch of red pepper flakes for heat. 1 minute later (or when the garlic fragrance is strong), I splashed in 3 tablespoons of chicken stock (you could use veg. stock or white wine here) and carefully plated it. I garnished with a few toasted hazelnuts and finished it with a squeeze of lemon juice and a bit of olive oil around the plate (pretty, no? hee hee). FINISHED!

I’d rock these out with a fatty pork chop or a perfect filet of halibut. I ate the WHOLE plate with the support of a crunchy toasted baguette and creamy slices of brie. I *love* eating in season – it’s mother nature’s way of planning a menu!

Thank you Spring!

~Spec

A bit of a serious-toned night shot and an informal HAY LIANA WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON OUR NEW TABLE video blog! I know you probably don’t peruse the IKEA catalogs regularly, but our table is the UTBY, a great wood / stainless modern combination bar table used for our lil’ kitchen nook! If you didn’t notice, the picture is more recent with a few of my favorite food photographs hung on metal frames. ON TO THE FOOD!

The salad was made mostly of mixed baby greens. I toasted some hazelnuts and crushed them in a kitchen towel and a meat pounder to achieve that “aquarium gravel” size (sorry, that’s the best comparison I could think of LOL) while the pomegranate and cranberries were dried and reconstituted for a few minutes in hot water. I added a bit of champagne vinaigrette and dressed the salad by hand. (Note: I didn’t realize that hazelnuts and pomegranate seeds go wonderfully together. It doesn’t necessarily convey “OMG SPRING IS HERRREEEE,” but it was nice to file that flavor combination away in my head.)

The steak was seared on a medium high heat pan and finished in a 350 degree oven until a juicy medium rare – finished off with a bit of fleur de sel (fancy French sea salt) for a tiny crunch and savoryness!

YAY FIRST MEAL AT THE TABLE!

~Spec

WOW IT’S BEEN A WHILE, HUH? LOL SORRIES. It was supposed to be 72 degrees outside yesterday, so I invited Deb and Matt over to have dinner since they originally asked us to go to a baseball game today. INVITES BEGET INVITES – KARMA PEOPLES, KARMA!

So, I twittered (follow that link Joy!) the following:

Dinner with Deb & Matt! Negima (Chicken/GrnOnion Skewers), Salad with Ginger Dressing & Strip Steaks with Mushrooms & Miso Butter

Fabrication deets follow

Negima (Grilled chicken with green onions on a skewer)
Cut chicken breasts into 1” pieces. Cut green onions the same length and cook directly over the grill, basting with teriyaki sauce.

Marinated Mushroom Skewers
Marinade mushrooms in 1/2 cup soy sauce, 3 tbsp. sake, 1 tbsp. mirin, 2 minced cloves of garlic, 1 slice of ginger minced, 1 tsp. of red pepper flakes and a few drizzles of canola oil in a ziptop bag for at least 1 hour. Skewer and grill next to negima.

Strip Steaks with Miso Butter
Pat steaks dry with paper towels and coat with freshly cracked pepper and Kosher salt. Throw on an insanely hot grill and sear for at least 4 minutes. Flip for another minute (3 for well done), set aside on a clean platter and add a nub of miso butter to melt while the meat rests for at least 15 minutes.

Miso butter
2 tablespoons of lightly colored miso, 1/2 cup of unsalted GOOD QUALITY butter, 3 minced cloves of garlic, lemon zest and minced parsley. Work everything in a bowl and once everything is combined, carefully place the mixture on a sheet of plastic wrap and roll out until it forms a cylinder with a 1” diameter. Freeze and cut slices off whenever you want!

So what’s most interesting is that the butter absolutely transforms this firmer cut of steak (as opposed to the ribeye) into something MEATIER than it already is. Why?

Well, I’ve noticed in a lot of vegetarian recipes, there’s the addition of an umami component – what’s called the “5th basic taste” – added to boost the oomph value with sweet, bitter, sour and salty flavors. You can get umami from mushrooms, soy sauce, seaweed and… MISO PASTE. If you add umami to MEAT, THE MOST UMAMI-EST THING EVER, what do you get? OMG DELICIOUSNESS.

I will TOTALLY keep a batch of the butter around just in case a dish is in need of a lil’ somethin’ somethin’ – you should too! Butter is an unbelievable tool in the kitchen!

WOOP WOOP BUTTA BUTTA.

~Spec

Beef and Tofu Stir Fry

My Employees Gave Me a Bday Cake!

Sorry Gary, I’m stealing your line.

The video above is an exact replica of what my xbox360 is doing right now. Apparently, my friend Joveth says that it’s most likely a GPU (graphics processing unit) issue. IT’D BE AWESOME IF IT WAS A TRIPPED OUT PONG, but it’s not. And I was going to LEGITIMATELY use it for work on Friday. Last time I sent it in for repairs at Microsoft, it took 6 weeks. I’m not looking forward to knowing whether or not I’m going to pay for it either, because I’m assuming they’ll say I will have to.

OH WELL MORE TIME FOR CUDDLING AND BLOGGING ROFL.

~Spec

Flickr set here. Sunday was my reeeeeeeeaallll birthday, and I spent it with Liana, my girlfriend of (two years TO THE DAY lol). We went all over the city, but we started it all off at Oasis, a bobba tea joint next to Uwajimaya – my favorite Japanese market. I ordered a fresh honeydew milk tea (cold) and Liana ordered milk tea (hot). And even though it doesn’t even come CLOSE to Quickly Cup’s (SF-based franchise), their popcorn chicken was crispy and crunchy.

ANYWAY.. we took some really random pictures and when you loooosely watch them in order, they actually tell a story. Oh and btw, we KNOW we’re matchy matchy with the orange and blue.

THAT’S HOW WE ROLL.

~Spec